Open Source Democracy
I have just finished reading my first ever on-line book from the Project Gutenburg library. Well, more like a pamphlet really, but inspiring none the less. It was Open Source Democracy by Douglas Rushkoff. I came across it searching on the title. I’d never actually heard of it, and although the authors name is familiar to me, I can’t actually remember where I’ve come across it in the past. Probably several places.
His argument is about how new knowledge emergent, or bottom-up, organisation, such as one might find in chaos mathematics, the behaviour of coral colonies and perhaps more importantly considering the pamphlet title the Open Source Software movement, will eventually impact and revitalise democracy, returning power and participation to the people. This knowledge will in largely be experiential. In that we as individuals have slowly gained control over the spectacle of media. With the advent of of television, we were passive viewers of a strange ‘magic’. Remote controls, video recorders, camcorders all played their part in giving us more control and power over what we watched. Finally video games, computers and the internet played their share in reducing our attention to corporate and government controlled centralised programming and allowed us to use media as a means of communication. As people get used to the participatory nature of the web, they will start to realise how unresponsive the current democratic system is. This, he argues, is why participation in elections are falling. Apparently though, people will start to demand a more participatory democratic experience, rebuilding it in such a way as to make it more responsive.
The actual argument is slightly more complex than my brief summary, and well worth a read in full if you have time. It is not my intent to reproduce it here. I have my own argument to add…
The reason I was searching on the term was because I had an idea. And the term ‘Open Source Democracy’ summed up that idea. I wanted to see if anyone had already thought of it. Rushkoff is heading in the right direction, but falls short of the idea that came to mind. Although I might be one of the people he mentions that will rewrite the rules. That’s not a role I object to playing! So I shall put my idea out there right now. The sooner people start building towards the realisation of this idea the better really…
My idea was at first a reaction against the take over of democracy by corporate closed source electronic voting systems, with no paper trail, verifiability or accountability. Of course, being a software engineer, I realised the problem was not with electronic voting, but with trusting the building and running of electronic voting systems to closed source and unaccountable corporations. After all, with old paper voting systems, we wouldn’t have trusted a private company to count the votes in secret. Yet this is effectively what we allow electronic voting companies to do today. Whether they have actually abused their position yet is besides the point. They shouldn’t be given the power to do so in the first place.
Why would an Open Source e-voting system be different? For one thing, it would allow the public to see the source code and submit improvements, meaning better security, ensured anonymity of voters, and guaranteed accuracy. Any flaws in the system would be spotted and corrected without vested interests hiding the flaws for fear of losing profits.
But why stop there? Such a system has the potential to do so much more than simply recreate the paper based system. We could rethink democracy and make it much more responsive and participatory. Here is my idea for a new democratic system:
1. Every member of society can register as a voter, and must be uniquely identifiable to prevent voting fraud from duplicate voting counts.
2. Voters can also register as a candidate, with their own personal manifesto, and if they have them details of party allegiances.
3. Voters can register and change their support for candidates at any time. Via a secure website systems, local public booths or where available via a traditional paper ballot.
4. The position of every candidate is clear at every stage of the voting process, so voters can see whether they feel the need to back a different horse.
5. At the beginning of each month, week, day or even hour depending on the model required, the top n candidates are awarded seats, where n is the number of seats.
6. Seat holder with the most backers gets to propose the agenda for the next debate, and the other seat holders are given a set amount of time to prepare counter arguments before the debate starts.
7. After all the debate, amendments to the proposal by the lead seat holder must be declared, and each successive seat holder may propose an alternative option to the proposal.
8. Seat holders then vote on the proposal and the alternative options, using a single transferable vote.
9. Each seat holder represents the total backers they currently hold, which may be different from the total they had when they were first selected. In this way, everyone gets to vote on each proposal, not just the seat holders.
Well, at the moment it is little more than a pipe dream. And I would add some caveats to prevent the system from being taken over by tyrants. This reflects that I do not stop at support for Open Source, but take things one step further by supporting the principles of the Free Software Foundation.
First, all truly democratic systems have limits on the power of the government over its people. Most people recognise freedom of speech as an important cornerstone of democratic liberty. However, I extend this to suggest complete individual sovereignty in matters of mind, body and soul. Not only should it be beyond the remit of government to violate an individuals sovereignty, it should be considered treason against democracy for them to make an attempt to do so, resulting in an immediate ban from candidacy at the very least.
Of course, it would be good to see this system developed and tested in experimental communities before attempting to introduce it for a real government, so that any flaws in my proposal or the initial implementations of it, can be ironed out. But I think I have come up with a basic blue print for advancing on the road to a better and freer society that early democratic efforts set us upon. Later I would like to see the system tested in a real governmental situation. With all the controversy over the House of Lords reforms in the UK, our parliaments second house might well prove to be the ideal testing ground.
The UK government has already started the Open Source Academy to promote the use of cost saving Open Source Software in local government and with the Conservative Party already promising a level playing field for Open Source Software in the UK, the early signs of political momentum building in this direction are already there. But the nature of emergent behaviour politics is such that we have to build it from the bottom up rather than waiting for the powers that be to do it for us.
Current democratic methods already lead to an extremely short term view by the elected representatives. The problem then arises that they only do what will win them support during the immediate period of their tenure – long term plans (like major public construction works – Olympics – or infrastructure planning – energy – get put on the back burner while populist (tabloid) policies that consist of little more than spin and superficial fixes get driven through to ensure that the gravy train keeps flowing. Changing the people making the decisions more frequently only leads to less cohesive planning and more knee-jerk politics. There needs to be more involvement with the decisions *without* increasing the rate of change or personnel. After all, the electorate need to be able to get to know their representative too – that’s no good if the name changes every whipstitch. Imagine how Northern Ireland could have swung like a (potentially violent) pendulum if this system had been in operation in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
May 31st, 2007 at 21:26:43Sometimes, politics needs stability at the top.
Neil, You might be right, which is why I proposed this system is tried out in experiment settings first, and then used as a second house option second (providing the experiments prove successful).
The point is that my proposal my seem unstable, and subject to the whim of tabloid populism, but I actually suspect the opposite. I suspect that populism and tabloid politics survives only because we get one chance, and only one chance to vote every five years.
And the very idea of democracy probably seemed unstable to people used to living in the old European Monarchies.
And just because people have the potential to change their vote at any time, doesn’t mean they will. I suspect a large number of people will be content to leave their vote well alone providing everything seems to be working, but will have the freedom to change it if the horse they back suddenly starts doing something they don’t like.
Also, it would be a lot harder for any one group to assume overall control in such a system, and that has to be a good thing as it will force politicians into cooperative modes of thinking as opposed to the competitive oppositional thinking the current system encourages. That in itself would tend to create stability.
But also, it would mean politicians would have to tread a lot more carefully and consider the opinions of their electorate a LOT more carefully. I suspect the best of them will get very good at holding on to their votes.
As for Northern Ireland, it hasn’t yet evolved a fully functional old style democracy yet, so its a bit premature to speculate about how an open source democracy might fare there. Of course, having said that, you may have illustrated why a move to this kind of system HAS to be emergent. If the people themselves demand it, the chances are it will work. But if it is forced on them from above, the chances are they aren’t ready for it.
May 31st, 2007 at 21:47:14Hi,
Nice Blog
Will comment intelligently soon.
K
May 31st, 2007 at 21:47:39Thanks Kao, I look forward to what you have to say!
May 31st, 2007 at 21:49:16Okay here we go.
Well the probably I see with participatory democracy is that it allows in populism if you have a majoritarian system. I don’t want to get bogged down in debates over elitism vs egalitarianism, but its a simple fact that most people in Britain want to bring back hanging and the only reason we dont have it is because our politicians know better (on this issue at least). So more popular voting would lead to more populism and intolerance in my opinion. This is why I prefer consensus decision making rather than voting. But this would be difficult to implement here.
I agree also with the earlier commenter that changing personnel at the top constantly could lead to instability, but then again not changing it will simply lead to tyranny. I think the answer is to decentralise decision making away from the top, so these people become rubber stampers and overseers without any planning or decision making powers in themselves. Then it would not really matter who they were or how long they were there as long as they were the right peeps. They could sanction or block any initiative from below at any time. Hence we would be voting for their wisdom and moral integrity more than anything else.
Failing that I vote for anarchist revolution during aggrevated system collapse
)
May 31st, 2007 at 22:04:41This is a nice idea in principle, like christianity, comunism, and a lot of other things. In general I support plebesite democracy, but this would seem to be that gone mad.
A consequence of this would be, that as the focus of the “voting” populace changed the leadership would change, but people are notoriously fickle and it would make implementing an important change very difficult.
Whoever was in charge would be changing almost from day to day, their replacement would then spend most of their time being briefed by the staff.
The staff would, of course need to be there permanently, so will be the actual government, unseen and all powerful.
Just a few thoughts.
Irene.
June 1st, 2007 at 05:44:25Kao – In my view an attempt to abuse this proposed system to introduce hanging would be a violation of the anti-tyranny clause mentioned in the article. So I’m not sure that would be a problem. Also, I’m not sure how these polls work where they ask people whether they want capital punishment or not, but I doubt they are accurate. After all, I’ve never met ANYONE in this country that thinks its a good idea. It sounds to me like they’re simply asking the wrong people.
As for decentralisation, I agree. The role of the centralised elected body should simply to be to coordinate those collective efforts beyond the scope and remit of more local bodies, which should in turn only be have the role of organising and coordinating those collective efforts beyond the scope and remit of individual sovereignty.
Everyone who has commented thus far – Until we perform experiments to see how this system works, I think predictions about how often leaders would change remains unfair. I think it is likely the vast majority of the populace would not change their support very often, thus creating a very stable government forced to stay in touch.
Irene – since one of my proposals was for this system to be used in a ’second house’ scenario, such as the house of lords in the uk, the staff you mention may well be accountable elected figures from the first house. Granted there are also nameless civil servants that support them, but they are already there. I fail to see how a more representative body would somehow be more likely to fall under its influence. In fact, since they would could theoretically be held immediately to account for a betrayal of their supporters, they wouldn’t actually be able to get away with it.
June 1st, 2007 at 06:49:56I agree that it would be a fatal problem to change the the representatives too often. No continuity, no career path, no long term goals etc. And reaction to events with no period for mature reflection is usually bad. But I think the basic ideas have merits for an improved voting system per se. And it could be used as a tool for accountability, which I think is sorely lacking.
I think that political manouverings are becoming very visible due to the plethora of communication methods but it seems difficult to do anything about even the worst excesses. (Iraq, weapons of MD, did they lie? Of course they did but spin and sacrificial lambs and more spin and diversions and delays move the issue onto the back burner.) This idea, a sort of instant referendum at reasonable expense, could move towards overcoming this. But it needs teeth so that results cannot be swept under the carpet. And our current reps have to approve it. Think freedom of info act. “I’m an MP. I don’t think that I should be subject to this. I’m a special case.”
June 1st, 2007 at 07:09:49Your ideas are intriguing. I would love for this type of system to work, everywhere. I am going to give this a lot of thought. That being said, I will echo the common worry: Tyranny of the Majority. As an American, I see this creeping its ugly head with the occupation of the Republican Party (certainly never a vanguard of liberty to start with) and promote a subtle shift toward theocracy. (Gee, I thought we had a point to make 200+years ago) Anyway, most people still see themselves as Christians.
There are of course other scary scenarios one can draw. You believe that stupidity in voting is due to the very brief time span encountered. Maybe. But I found myself questioning if, in fact, most people truly want liberty. Do they actually want to recognize their own sovereinty? I am not sure. I look back at America’s history, and I think to myself: you know this liberty idea was pretty much just rushed and hoodwinked in by a very small handful of charismatic people. And from then on people who want to exercise autonomy have had to fight tooth and nail. And frankly, there is a dirth of true protest.
I don’t know what I will become if I truly accept that I am a member of a small group of sentient human beings who wants my autonomy recognized and set free. I don’t know if I want to wait 1000 years for these other assholes to catch up.
Well, I aplogize if I rambled, but this is a subject close to my heart. I certainly cast my will
for open source democracy to be viable.
August 5th, 2007 at 03:55:33